Only if you have a data cap you have to worry about, and even then only for certain games. In most cases I'd recommend just wait until a good sale from Steam (they should have two big ones for Thanksgiving and Christmas) and take advantage of the low prices.

I'd recommend turning off cloud saves unless you plan to take advantage of them across multiple computers (there have been reported issues of synch issues wiping out some game progress when a most recent local save gets overwritten by an older cloud save in rare circumstances). You should also take note of any games you don't want to automatically update, and change the settings for each of those games (needs to be done on a game by game basis).

My suggestion: sign up, install Steam, install a free game you like (preferably an offline one, which is more difficult to find on that list), play it and reach your own conclusions. Don't like it or have problems? Try to solve them, ask for help if necessary. Don't like it even so? Don't use it again. You're fine with it? Buy Skyrim on sale for $5 and play it.

To me, this is really about right to data privacy - sold cheap every day by parties public and commercial surely - yet more strongly cherished by European school of thought on grounds of a principle.

I personally have grudgingly accepted Origin client - mainly because I love BioWare since Baldur's Gate, and at least they bothered to put their own proprietary dinge in place.

In case my gaming habits are data-mined in style of super market bonus cards - the thought of which I find most invasive and unfairly unilateral - at least those most probably are not peddled to 3rd parties.

On practical grounds, to my experience, Steam was super buggy and invasive with Windows running on Mac HW - this was on XP though. Have not, and so do not intend to test Win7.

As to BioWare / Origin, I can only say that they seem to respect that when legally purchased, a game is intended for perpetual enjoyment.

I "lost" my activation codes for Dragon Age series when wiping out my whole Windows partition, because my specific e-mail address for the purpose had been meanwhile deactivated because I never used it for actual e-mailing.

It took four different chats including quite specific proof of purchase, but got those activation codes for most part reassigned. For both parties, the time and effort was hardly justifiable - but it probably was a matter of principle on both sides.

Do I really own it, or is it a leasehold..? For this I do not think there is yet an explicit European ruling, at least. But would be most curious to observe one!

For a trader, Skyrim costs around $4. Legendary edition is around $8. And you can trade item drops, card drops, and bundle keys for special items that people accept as $4-$8. So if you use Steam trading effectively you wouldn't have to pay for any of your games. That's not including the abundance of free promotional ones (that cost in the store but are free from certain websites).

For the spyware/bloatware things you've heard, Steam is at 156MB RAM with processes opened for group chats adding another 100MB. Origin is at 117MB and doesn't have community features to tack on extra processes. If you have 4GB or higher then you'll be fine with practically everything. And they don't spy on you. That's what our wonderful government is for. They do collect usage data (that's why you see hours played and achievements on people's profiles). They're not following you on your daily rounds of cat pictures.

I wouldn't recommend any digital distribution (DD) aside from GOG if you needed boxed copies. They don't make much sense if you're not completely digital and the games will always cost more. I wouldn't recommend using DD's if you wanted to buy things at full price either. On sale is where you find the sweet point between DRM and digital products in my opinion. And that's when they're easier to trade for too.

I'm reminded of a video i watched not long ago. Linus has publicly stated there's no backdoors in his Linux kernel, and you can confirm this by going through the source. Of course any bug properly exploited could be an open door...

The comparison when put up against closed source software, is you can't confirm it, you can't look at the sources, you can't be sure. You have to just take their word on it.

Regardless if say the XBone was programmed with the DRM to watch you and stream your home and spy on you, there is no guarantee. But the possibility is there, and often those with power quickly become corrupt. How easy it is to encode the audio stream and send it over the network, it only takes oh say 4k/s, and with internet over 1Mb you wouldn't notice the drop in rate, yet be listened to without the XBone ever having to be on, because the microphone was the equipment that's always on with the Kinnect, and the XBone has to be on at least minimally in order to turn on automatically via a pulse from the Kinnect...

With some DRM systems and games, they will refuse to start if certain programs are active or detected as an 'anti-cheating' measures. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but if a program just lightly pinged what programs were open and active every minute (possibly with what commands they were called with) packaged that and sent it back, it could effectively be spying on you. Sometimes those arguments can be quite sensitive...

Spyware was almost useless before, as you had to dial into a network and you'd notice if your computer was constantly trying to connect for some odd reason, and you could also notice a large dipping speed because of the limits in the lines. But right now? That's not the case.

Well, some people say if you have a physical copy you don't have to have a bad conscience if you... find a Steam-free version elsewhere.

About a year ago I bought Dawn of War 2 Retribution. It was a double-layer dvd of 9 GB. I inserted the dvd to install the game. It asked me to install steam. Guess waht happened next..... It decided to download the whole game from steam. Yes, the WHOLE game. It took me 2 days to install it and then I was able to play it.
I thought the patch system was for cases like that, where you wouldn't have to download the WHOLE game just to install the latest patch.
My point is that the cd-dvd versions are obsolete. The only thing you need nowadays is a high-speed internet connection.
OR we should just wait until all these games are available on gog! (just kidding......)

It's quite unusual to buy a disc anyway nowadays. Mostly as on GOG you just buy a license and then the game appears in your account for download or installation. Afaik Steam does that quite well and started even earlier than GOG with it. However it can be that the offline mode of Steam sometimes makes minor problems (it least it did for me back one year ago). But apart from that and that Steam wants to phone home now and then, Steam is kind of like GOG (or GOG kind of like Steam).

So, yes buy Skyrim if you want to play it and tolerate DRM, but don't buy it on a disc which is useless anyway.

I know everyone has different opinions on what is or isn't 'spying'. I for one consider that when Steam examines your DNS cache - THAT IS SPYING. I don't care how Gabe "puts it". It is spying. What is in my DNS cache is not Steam's business - regardless how the corporation phrases the explanation.

VAC, not Steam. You can use Steam without ever touching VAC.

Sadly, this practice is too common in anti-cheat software.

Like how they say '30fps is more cinematic', when they could instead just say 'no, the hardware can't handle it... Sorry next-gen is a big fat disappointment, blame M$ and $ony and your stingy wallets for providing such weak hardware'.

But that's interesting...

To me, VAC is a component of Steam; and it does spy - a counterpoint to the post to which I replied that stated it does not spy.

VAC never gets activated unless you play on a VAC enabled server, so while VAC does get installed with Steam, it doesn't just do its thing all by itself, you need to activate it by joining a VAC enabled server first (and it deactivates when you quit). Apparently, Punkbuster did something similar. If you think that distinction between two pieces of software which don't even necessarily run concurrently is not important, pff... Sure, we're on public discussion boards tho, so just allow me to elaborate ;-)

and does it still do that? According to Newel, that cheat prevention only worked for about 2 weeks, and then it was worked around, so it is no longer active.
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/176829-valve-trust-us-our-vac-anti-cheat-software-isnt-interested-in-your-porn-surfing-habits